For anyone who has read back through my blog for the last few months, you will know that things have been more than a little stressful lately.
We have been in limbo waiting for the final puzzle pieces to fall into place and today, various bits of information have been made available that are good in some ways and bad in others and I wanted to get everything down in writing, so that in 12 months time, I can look back at what’s been happening and know that the wait and the stress was all worth it.

First of all, my eldest daughter Murron has been sleeping on my dining room floor with my now 14th month old grandson since June.
She is eligible for housing, but available housing is few and far between and finding her forever home would take quite a while, possibly a year of more.

After my husband passed away in July I was forced to think about moving because I could no longer afford the rent on my own. Thankfully, his insurance and private pension have allowed me to buy a property with a very small mortgage. I would be moving into this property with my other 2 adult daughters, Marjorie and Dharma.
We found the perfect house and got our offer accepted and the ball rolling with the purchase.
The only snag was that the house had tenants, but it was being sold with vacant possession.

In August I issued Murron with an eviction notice.
I know what some people will say about that, but both me and Murron are in complete agreement in that we could never live together again. We would end up killing each other! So the eviction notice explained the whole situation and that Murron needed emergency housing ASAP while she was bidding on her forever home.
However, as I didn’t have a moving date, I was pressured into keeping Murron under my roof for as long as possible.
Her case worker told us that once I have a date for moving, to contact her and they would get the ball rolling on temporary housing.

We were told that the tenants were given their notice and should be out of the house by 17th November, so we bided our time and waited…… and waited and waited.
The 17th November, came and went with no sign of movement from the tenants.
So after an extremely stressful weekend last weekend, I fired off various e-mails to my estate agents, their letting agents and my solicitor, to find out what was happening and where we stood.

Today, we finally found out that the tenants are in fact leaving, but it has been delayed due to their new property requiring some repair work before they move in. They ‘should’ be moved out by 9th Dec and my estate agents have requested that the weekend of 10th Dec should be used to do the post tenant check and that keys should be made available for completion on 12th Dec.
So we have a tentative date but nothing firm.

With this information we decided to contact Murron’s housing caseworker as per the agreement made in August, only to find that she left the service in October and hasn’t been replaced!
Fantastic!!
So, we have put the whole situation down in writing and are trying to get someone to pick it up and get the ball rolling on the emergency housing Murron needs ASAP before we lose what little space we have and she is sleeping in a storage shed.

So the last few months have been a bit of a powder keg of stress and my mental health has been taking a real beating.
Today was the last straw and I had to do something to get it all back under control. So I informed work of the whole situation and requested some annual leave from what will ‘hopefully’ be our completion date on the 12th until after Xmas.
Work have been fabulous, as they have been since this all kicked off in July, and I couldn’t be more thankful to them.
That has at least, brought the boil down to bit more of a manageable level.

I have a week of annual leave next week with a few things planned, but most notably, we are burying my husband’s ashes.
The rest of the time is going to be spent packing up whatever I can in anticipation of a move, possibly two if we count Murron, and putting up other people’s Xmas decorations.
I will then be back at work for a week before more annual leave and hopefully the moving house will finally be happening.

Right now I am only just hanging in there.
If something else goes wrong now I am seriously going to be lose my sanity.

So that’s where I’m at.
Even though I’ve tried in my last few blog to carry on as if nothing is happening, it’s not working.
I’ve lost interest in most things because I can’t stop thinking about the dozen balls I’m trying to keep up in the air at the moment.
I haven’t even been in the mood to stalk Adam!! and that’s saying something.